Why I Returned to the Catholic Church (Al Kresta)

. . . Including a Searching Examination of Various Flaws and Errors in the Protestant Worldview and Approach to Christian Living

Part III: Tradition and Church

(edited and transcribed by Dave Armstrong; originally uploaded on 16 November 2004). [Part breakdown and part titles by Annalex]

There's no way of escaping tradition, at two levels: sociologically and theologically. Sociologically, why does the church exist? Once you're inside a community of people, you begin doing things a certain way. You fall into certain traditions. They do develop. There's no avoiding them. And the traditions usually exist for fairly good reasons. Within the church, questions come up: how are you going to have communion? How are we gonna baptize? What are you gonna teach the new convert? Questions have to be answered. And so you begin a tradition. It's the social glue that brings cohesiveness to a clan or a tribe. In order for any group to retain its identity for more than one generation, they have to articulate their reason for existence to the next generation. And no group can do that effectively by merely saying, "we're Christians. Mere Christians," because there are thousands upon thousands of such groups, and the questions always remains: "well, what's your group's reason for existing, and not joining up with another?" And so I kept asking that question at Shalom: "why don't we go down to the first church down the street?" And eventually about half of 'em did [laughter]. It was after I resigned that they ended up doing it.

Tradition forms the backdrop of particular doctrines, and if you lose the tradition, you end up losing the doctrine. If you lose the tradition that led up to this statement that "Jesus was God in human flesh" (and part of the tradition was the battle which was fought), then you lose the meaningfulness of the doctrine. It ceases to be significant. You have to be self-confident about your roots, otherwise you'll be tossed to and fro by the winds of modernity. So as a pastor, then, I had to come to grips with this question of tradition, both sociologically and theologically. It was clear to me from reading the Apostle Paul's letters, that he believed in an unwritten tradition that he was passing along to his people. He referred to what he had passed on that he had heard from other witnesses. And he expected that to be binding. So the question wasn't whether there would be tradition or not. There would be. The question was: by what authority do you determine right tradition from wrong tradition?

I guess the coup de gras for me on this issue of tradition was the realization that evangelical Protestantism has tradition right at its core. The canon of Scripture is itself a tradition nowhere established in the Bible. It's a church tradition. Francis Schaeffer was very good in that he taught me that one's presuppositions and first principles must be able to be lived and not just thought. And yet Protestantism cannot live out faithfully its commitment to the Bible alone, because on that basis there'd be no canon of Scripture. There'd be no Bible! So Protestants are in the terrible position of having its primary authority not being able to justify its own existence. They have to justify a collection of books, which are secondary to the Word. The Word is prior to the community. The Word calls forth the community, and the community gathers around that Word. The process of inscripturation is subsequent. It comes as the community reflects upon the Word, and is used to crystallize and condense that Word for posterity. Jesus Himself functioned as the Word, which drew a community together, which then produced certain documents and collected them.

Another thing that hit me as a pastor was the nature of the Church and Church government. Francis Schaeffer had taught me back in 1974, in his book, The Mark of a Christian, that in John 13 and 17, Jesus talks about a real, visible oneness, a practicing, practical oneness, across all denominational lines, among all Christians. We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, and to believe that Jesus's claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians. He kept talking about oneness in terms of people getting along with one another. He did not like the Roman Catholic Church at all. He thought it was an enforced uniformity and he complained about conservatives and progressives squabbling miserably in the Roman Catholic Church. But what he did do for me was focus on "visible." It had to be visible. This unity had to be observable by the unbelieving world.

[recalls the story of an erring, unrepentant, sinning brother in his congregation, who left when confronted] How can you exercise restorative church discipline, if all they do is bump off to another church? So all of a sudden institutions became not a bad thing, but a good thing. If we were part of a denomination we probably could do something. But then again he could just go to another denomination. So I began thinking about issues of excommunication, by what authority do you excommunicate; what are the guidelines for it? And it dawned on me that the New Tesdtament never expected a situation where, if you were barred from the fellowship, that you could just go over to some other fellowship! The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, says "I'm gonna turn this fellow over to Satan for the salvation of his soul," and in 2 Corinthians, he has to say, "listen, back off this guy! You've disciplined him enough; he's at the point of despair. Welcome him back as a brother."

That was a major turning point, because my pastoral work was jeopardized by the existence of competing fellowships. This really disturbed me, in a way that's hard to describe to people who haven't been in that [situation], but my pastoral effort was now cheapened. How can you discipline if there's no unity of the body? Even in the New Testament, with all the disagreements among believers about law and grace and circumcision and eating of meat offered to idols, and qualifications for leadership, splintering into independent groups is never advocated. In fact, one of the few offenses that give us reason to separate from a brother is the offense of disunity (Romans 16): "I urge you brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions. Keep away from them." So I was big on this church unity thing, but it was all invisible, spiritual, all out here. And it wasn't working very well.

I'd also taught on 1 Timothy 3:15: "the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth." It was one of those sermons where I would say, "and that's us!" And I'd look out there and I'd say, "like hell it is!" This is a joke! Here we are, 125 of us: "the pillar and foundation of the truth." And Paul wasn't referring to some invisible reality.

And yet Protestantism cannot live out faithfully its commitment to the Bible alone, because on that basis there'd be no canon of Scripture. There'd be no Bible!

Even the Church recognizes the difference between "inspired" writings and "uninspired" writings; the first being written by God through men. So please tell me how there would be no "inspired" writings.

Al says, there will be no canon: the books that are inspired will not be known as such.

One way to visualize it is to imagine a Religion section as Borders that would contain books like this:

Second Letter of John
Tea Leaves, Ouiji, And Other Inspired Stuff
Tao of Hydroponic Tomato
Hymns by Luther
Exodus and Joshua, commentary by Moshe Dayan
Jeremiah
Gospel of Thomas
City of God
Gospel of Judas
The Holy Koran
St. Paul For Dummies
Gospel of Mark and Letters of Peter, annotated by Jack Chick

Al says, there will be no canon: the books that are inspired will not be known as such.

This thinking reveals why he converted, obviously he believes his new church was the deciding factor in what was Scripture. If he studied history at all he would know they were very late in recognizing the Canon.

Luke 24:44 "Then he said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."

2Peter 3:15-16 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation-as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles,......as they do also the rest of Scriptures.

2 Timothy 4:11-13 Only Luke is with me....Bring the cloak that I left with with Carpus at Troas when you come-and the books, especially the parchments.

IOW, Scripture itself gives us a good idea of what should be in the Canon.

Also, the only books that were not written by Apostles in the New Testament are Mark, Luke, Acts, James and Jude. Mark was a coworker with Peter and traveled with Paul. Luke was a friend of Paul. The writers of James and Jude were Christ's brothers. The late recognition by the RCC was after the fact.

This thinking reveals why he converted, obviously he believes his new church was the deciding factor in what was Scripture. If he studied history at all he would know they were very late in recognizing the Canon.

Absolutely. It should be also noted that the Church's position on the matter is that the inspired writings were always recognized-at least the early Church. They knew what was inspired and what wasn't. It wasn't a matter of them picking and choosing them from a Border's aisle. It was as if the inspired ones had white, leather covers with gold leaf while the others were paperback. They weren't hard to tell.

It really was later in the Church that the leaders concocted the idea that they put together the scriptures. This is completely contrary to the early Church's view and, with all due respect, is rather laughable when talking about tradition. Had this author studied this he would not have made this careless mistake.

They weren’t “always recognized.” There were many apocryphal writings that had great currency in their day and in fact if you look at early art of that period, you will see depictions of some figures who are never mentioned in the Gospels but featured prominently in apocryphal writings.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that these figures never existed or that the apocryphal writings didn’t have some truth or reality to them. In some cases, the writings may have been based on oral tradition about figures and events, and they were often cited by perfectly orthodox Christian writers and preachers during the first couple of centuries of Christianity. However, their overall theological message was determined not to be in line with the truth. The Muratorian Canon (first known listing of the canonical books) may date to the 2nd century; even at the latest dating, it would be 4th century, and by the early 5th century, two Councils had decided on the matter and a definitive canon was issued by the Pope.

Protestants like to think that truth spontaneously wells out of an assembly, but the sad fact is that heresy can just as easily infect that assembly and the thing produced is not truth. There has to be a defining authority; the bishops and the Pope are that authority.

Even Luther knew this, but he decided that he was the authority, and he dropped a number of canonical books because they conflicted with his doctrine of sola fides. This was the first attempt to change the canon, and it was because he set himself up as the authority, not because a mysterious buried truth somehow seeped up from the ground somewhere.

It should be also noted that the Church's position on the matter is that the inspired writings were always recognized-at least the early Church. They knew what was inspired and what wasn't.

Amen Brother!

There were all kinds of discussions, among early Christians and pronouncements by leaders of churches, before any synod/council convened to add their opinion. It is interesting that when councils did start to convene their opinions fell in line with what had already been recognized.

The canons of both testaments were first stated at the so-called African councils in late 4c. There has been no dispute regarding the canon since then in the East and in the West the matter was taken up by Luther, which prompted the restatement of the African canons by Trent.

There were considerable discussions all along what is and what is not inspired. The opinions varied widely: some considered only a few books: gospel of Luke and some Pauline epistles as inspired; others would include letters of the early popes as well. The cirteria for canonicity were

consistency with the Holy Tradition

internal consistency

consistency with books not in dispute

clear apostolic provenance (Pope Clement, twice removed form St. Peter lacked that, or we'd have papacy spelled out in his letter to the Corinthians with great clarity; on the other hand, you are wrong in saying that Jude and James were not apostles)

Jesus and His teaching as central topic (the Apocalypse was disputed on these grounds as lacking the historical concreteness of the rest of the scripture)

There were about 70 gospels to choose from. The manuscripts differed as well. The authorship is rarely spelled out in the books themselves, and was in dispute in many cases. The Church was the deciding factor in forming the New Testament Canon.

The Old Testament Canon was an easier matter thanks to the Jewish tradition; however, in an attempt to convict Christians of apostacy, the council of Jamnia (AD 90) removed books form the Septuagint and settled on the Masoretic Jewish Tradition instead, thus putting the Deuterocanonical books in doubt. That, too, was settled for the Christians in the African councils, till Luther decided to revive the controversy and eliminate books that did not fit his theological fantasies.

The books themselves were not written by baptist ministers either; all the human writers are saints of the Catholic Church.

Insidents of homosexuality and pedofilia in the Catholic clergy is not higher than in other religious institutions; it is much lower than in the public schools. At its peak in the 70’s and 80’s aboput 4% of the Catholic clergy was accused. At this point, the Inquisition is at work in Catholic seminaries to rid the Church of the lavender mafia for good and completely.

The interest in the left wing media in highlighting the defects of the Catholic Church is however, unprecedented.

Definitely. The 20 c has seen a shift from ethno-cultural Catholicism of the Spanish, Poles and Italians to religion as a matter of choice. This cause a significant outflow form the Church in favor of the easier theologies of Protestantism, especially in traditionally Protestant America.

So, can your 3,000 ex-Catholics articulate their thoughts on church authority and tradition?

It really was later in the Church that the leaders concocted the idea that they put together the scriptures. This is completely contrary to the early Church's view and, with all due respect, is rather laughable when talking about tradition. Had this author studied this he would not have made this careless mistake.

Harley,

Have you ever heard of Marcion? Are you aware of the history behind him? Did you know that at that point, the various bishops began making lists and so forth until the Church defined the canon?

Is the Church supposed to listen to every guy who comes along with some "theory" that parts of the Sacred Scriptures don't belong? Marcion wanted to toss out the OT, Luthe had his list of "acceptable scriptures" as well. The Church has been tasked to protect the Tradition once given, not Marcion, not Luther.

The canons of both testaments were first stated at the so-called African councils in late 4c.

Rome did not have a representative there and Jerome had already started the translation known as the Vulgate. Also, those meetings just reaffirmed what was already accepted. IOW, Rome did not really declare what they believed the Canon to be until after the fact.

It should be also noted that the Church's position on the matter is that the inspired writings were always recognized-at least the early Church. They knew what was inspired and what wasn't. It wasn't a matter of them picking and choosing them from a Border's aisle. It was as if the inspired ones had white, leather covers with gold leaf while the others were paperback. They weren't hard to tell.

Very much true in the case of the canonical gospels and the letters of St. Paul.

Very much false in the case of everything else. In the early church, "canonical Scriptures" was synonymous with "read in the liturgy". Some places read the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Epistles of Clement in the liturgy. Some didn't. To this day, Revelation is not read in the Orthodox liturgy, though they (today) consider it canonical.

But this is kind of anachronistic of you, Harley. If it's so "easy" to tell what was inspired, why did Luther declare, not merely that the Epistle of James wasn't inspired, but that its author wasn't even a Christian?

Depends on the religion and on the person. If a cradle Catholic goes through solid catechisis, understands and practices his faith, confesses sins and receives the Holy Communion, of course he will be saved. An interesting question is, would a cradle Protestant be saved? The answer to this one is far more complicated.

What make you think [the Protestant theologies] are easier.

Primarily, the variations on the security of salvation theme, and the relaxed teaching on contraception and divorce.

can articulate their faith

What would they say on the specific issues raised by Kresta in this segment, on the necessity to choose between traditions and on the authority and visible character of the Church?

anyone who leaves the Catholic church must be an idiot

No, but it is easier to leave the Church than to stay in it. We are a counter-cultural early medieval organisation. I am not surprised when Catholics leave; I am surprised how many of them come back enlightened by the experience.

Depends on the religion and on the person. If a cradle Catholic goes through solid catechisis, understands and practices his faith, confesses sins and receives the Holy Communion, of course he will be saved. An interesting question is, would a cradle Protestant be saved? The answer to this one is far more complicated.

What make you think [the Protestant theologies] are easier.

Primarily, the variations on the security of salvation theme, and the relaxed teaching on contraception and divorce.

can articulate their faith

What would they say on the specific issues raised by Kresta in this segment, on the necessity to choose between traditions and on the authority and visible character of the Church?

anyone who leaves the Catholic church must be an idiot

No, but it is easier to leave the Church than to stay in it. We are a counter-cultural early medieval organisation. I am not surprised when Catholics leave; I am surprised how many of them come back enlightened by the experience.

"If a cradle Catholic goes through solid catechisis, understands and practices his faith, confesses sins and receives the Holy Communion, of course he will be saved."

You can do all that and still not be saved. John said this was the test:

"We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's loveis truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did."

In other words, unless a person is obeying Jesus' words and becoming more like Jesus, there is no reason to think that that person will be saved - protestant or catholic.

" Primarily, the variations o­n the security of salvation theme"

I agree that the Bible teaches the reality of apostacy. But it also teaches the reality of a present-tense salvation:

"How great is the love the Father has lavished o­n us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure." - 1st John 3

... and this truth is something that, to the best of my knowlege, the Catholic Church completely overlooks. In fact, they would say it is a sin to be so confident of salvation! Yet it is what the Apostle John taught.

" What would they say o­n the specific issues raised by Kresta..."

I'll have to ask.

" No, but it is easier to leave the Church than to stay in it."

Would you say the same is would be true for Kresta - i.e. that it was easier for his to leave the protestant church???

I said, “if a cradle Catholic goes through solid catechisis, understands and practices his faith, confesses sins and receives the Holy Communion, of course he will be saved.” In other words I had enumerated either directly or by summary (”practices his faith”) the requirements that you say I missed.

I agree that if a Protestant obeys all the commandments of Christ, goes to confession and received the Holy Eucharist, then he, too will be saved. But then he will be with Al Kresta today.

No, It was obviously not easy for Kresta to leave, as we see from the three parts already posted. That is because the modernity gives one a very strong bias against sacramental hierarchical religion.

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